ANTISYMMETRIC TENSOR FIELD-INTERACTIONS AND NEUTRON-STAR MODELS

Gravity theories involving, besides the usual Einsteinian metric field, a macroscopically coupled, finite range antisymmetric tensor field B(munu) are studied as foils to the strong gravitational field predictions of general relativity, We consider the minimal class of such models among the multi-parameter gravity theories recently introduced by Damour, Deser and McCarthy. In the limiting case where the range mu-1 of the B field is much larger than the characteristic size of the system, this class comprises two arbitrary parameters: the coupling length lambda, which measures the coupling of B(munu) to the baryon rest mass density, and a dimensionless parameter b characterizing the deviation of the 'physical' metric from the Einstein value. We show that when lambda is a few kilometres and b is of order unity this class of models predicts strong-field deviations of order unity in the overall characteristics of neutron stars: radius, binding energy, surface red shift and maximum mass.